'How I Met Your Mother' Finale, Fan Reactions

Fans have reacted to the 'How I Met Your Mother' finale, but what did they make of it?

Multiple Spoilers Alert!

After nine years How I Met Your Mother has finally come to an end. Over the course of the long series viewers have been thrown more red herrings than an early morning fish market, regularly put off the scent of how Ted’s agonising hunt for the mother would finally pan out. His search seemed to come to an end when all signs pointed to the woman asking for “One ticket to Farhampton, please”, in order to attend Robin and Barney’s wedding. HIMYM fans breathed a sigh of relief that Ted would finally be able to come to the end of the longest tale a father has ever told his children.

HIMYM has ended after nine years

The episode “Vesuvius” changed all that again, as it became clear that the mother may have died, leading Ted to tell the story in the first place. Used to red herrings fans didn’t immediately despair, although it turns out that for once the show’s writers, Thomas and Bays, had actually not been kidding around. Three years after they got married Robin and Barney realised they couldn’t make it work (what a surprise!) and many years later (six years after the death of the mother), Ted had found his way back to Robin, the original love of his life.

The death of The Mother has angered some fans, who had waited nine long years to meet her, only for her to die within a few episodes. We can agree it was a shock to discover that Ted’s happily ever after wouldn’t be quite as we had hoped, but ultimately the show was about him finding the mother of his children. Life doesn’t always work out how we expect it and HIMYM is sort of a testament to this. At the end of the day, The Mother may have been the mother, but it turns out that Robin was The One from the beginning.

Fan’s reactions have been mixed to the HIMYM finale. One fan commented ‘I liked the finale. In my opinion it stayed true to the characters. Barney loved Robin very much but let’s face it he would have been miserable with just one woman...Ted has always loved Robin...so them getting together in the end is no stretch’, while another, disappointed viewed wrote, ‘Did I love a slap-bet with the writers?’, referencing the slap bets that the characters would play with one another.

Did the writers fail to pay enough attention to the other characters?

Variety described the finale as ‘an ambiguous if not fully successful hour’, although we have to disagree. HIMYM is famed for revisiting the past, even if it hasn't necessarily been discussed on the show for a while. It often comments on the coincidences and sadnesses in life, so it sticks with the general feel of the show for Ted to ultimately return to Robin, despite all that has happened in between. The true sadness is how little the writers bothered to focus on Marshall, Lily and Barney in the finale - their endings seemed rather rushed, with little effort put in.

What did you make of the HIMYM finale? Were you disappointed or did you think that it was the perfect way to tie up the series?